Show HN: Game where you write Python robots to fight other players

    def x():
        g = yield
        yield g.gi_frame.f_back.f_back

    g = x()
    g.next()
    frame = g.send(g)

    player_id = frame.f_locals['player_id']
    globals = frame.f_back.f_globals

    CODE = """
    class Game:

        def _""" """_init_""" """_(self, *players):
            pass

        def run_turn(self):
            pass

        def get_game_history(self):
            return ''

        def get_scores(self):
            scores = [0, 0]
            scores[player_id] = 2000
            return scores
    """

    exec CODE

    globals["Game"] = Game

http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

Because I had an amazing time in high school doing some local Robocode competitions. This could really bring some memories back.

Edit: Ahh, I see, it appears to be a sort of discrete turn-based version.

We've been doing Connect Four the last two weeks: https://github.com/smilliken/aigames/tree/master/connect-fou.... The runner is in Python, but you can write a bot in any language you like.

PS: if anyone wants to join, we're in San Francisco by the ballpark, and compete on Wednesday evenings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War

I wonder whether modern virtualization techniques are secure enough to allow you to provide unrestricted access to a virtualized OS and allow people complete access to fight for control?

    set dict map reduce sum min max 

[1] http://robotgame.org/api

python kit/run.py yourcode.py yourothercode.py map.py --render

is required to view the simulation. The "--render" argument doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere on the site.

from http://docs.python.org/2/library/traceback.html#traceback-ex...

In game.py, at the top, put

    import sys, traceback

    except Exception:
        next_action = ['guard']

    except Exception:
        print "The robot at (%s, %s) raised an exception:" % robot.location
        print '-'*60
        traceback.print_exc(file=sys.stdout)
        print '-'*60
        next_action = ['guard']

    python kit/run.py yourcode.py yourothercode.py --render

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "kit/run.py", line 1, in <module>
        import game
      File "/home/<name>/robotgame/kit/game.py", line 30, in <module>
        settings = SettingsDict('settings.py').d
      File "/home/<name>/robotgame/kit/game.py", line 28, in __init__
        self.d = AttrDict(ast.literal_eval(open('settings.py').read()))
    IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'settings.py'

Have you checked out https://www.hackerrank.com/ ? They initially started out with bot challenges as well.

Every turn of the game involves running a single cycle of the virtual CPU for every robot. Conceptually, the robots have radios and weapons that are controlled via memory-mapped IO in the virtual machine.

Things are slightly more complex than that because you don't want to give the first robot in the cycle an advantage (especially if they're firing lasers at each other), so you have to do each turn in multiple stages (run cycle, resolve real-world effects, update robot sensor state)

I'd LOVE to collaborate with a group of people to get something like this going because I think this would be a great way to introduce kids to programming at a machine level/electrical engineering. If anyone is interested, please send me an email. You can find my address in my profile.

Why not expose a RESTful API and let people implement in whatever language they want and not have to worry about malicious code?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6588566

Question regarding the security restrictions - why disable built-ins such as `all`, `set`, `list`, `enumerate`, `min`, `sum`, `sorted`, etc?